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Wirefly X PRIZE Cup

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For other X PRIZEs, see X PRIZE (disambiguation)
The Wirefly X PRIZE logo combines a stylized letter X reminiscent of a space trajectory with stark, bold text.
A demonstration of the "rocket bike" at this year's Wirefly X Prize Cup.

The Wirefly X PRIZE is the current iteration of an ambitious project launched in 1995 to spur private enterprise towards spaceflight and exploration. The 2006 Wirefly X PRIZE Cup was held on October 20-21 in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and represented the latest effort by the X PRIZE Foundation to continue encouraging innovation in the private sector [1]. The 2006 Wirefly X PRIZE Cup focused on rocketry and lunar landing technology, offering up $2.5 million in prizes to teams competing in several distinct competitions related to the general theme. The exposition also featured high-powered rocket launches and exhibits intended to boost public interest in aerospace technology. In December of 2006, the Cup's organizers announced expansion plans based on the success of the October event [2].

An official Wirefly X Prize Cup blog is up at Wirefly's X Prize site with a collection of updates and photos posted throughout the weekend, and archived for future reference.

The original Ansari X PRIZE was a US$10,000,000 prize, offered by the X PRIZE Foundation, for the first non-government organization to launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks. It was modeled after early 20th-century aviation prizes, and aimed to spur development of low-cost spaceflight. The prize was won on October 4 2004, the 47th anniversary of the Sputnik 1 launch, by the Tier One project using the experimental spaceplane SpaceShipOne.

Motivation

The X PRIZE invokes romantic ideals of pioneering aviators.
The X PRIZE invokes romantic ideals of pioneering aviators.

The X PRIZE was first proposed by Dr. Peter Diamandis in an address to the NSS International Space Development Conference in 1995. The notion of a competitive goal was adopted from the SpaceCub project, demonstration of a private vehicle capable of flying a pilot to the edge of space, defined as 100 km altitude. This goal was selected to help encourage the space industry in the private sector, which is why the entries were not allowed to have any government funding. It aimed to demonstrate that spaceflight can be affordable and accessible to corporations and civilians, opening the door to commercial spaceflight and space tourism. It is also hoped that competition will breed innovation, introducing new low-cost methods of reaching Earth orbit. If everything goes as planned, X Prize winners will become pioneers of low-cost space travel and unfettered human expansion into the solar system.

The X PRIZE was modeled after many prizes from the early 20th century that helped prod the development of air flight, including notably the $25,000 Orteig Prize that spurred Charles Lindbergh to make his solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean. NASA is developing similar prize programs called Centennial Challenges to generate innovative solutions to space technology problems.

The Wirefly X PRIZE Cup continues the mission to push private enterprise towards innovative solutions, by offering monetary rewards and organizational support to the community of aerospace professionals -- and by staging Earth's great space exposition.

Dan Schlund, the Rocket Man

2006 Wirefly X Prize Cup

With the success of the original X PRIZE competition, the open competitions for $2.5 million in monetary prizes were the highlight of the 2006 Wirefly X PRIZE Cup. The aerospace teams in Las Cruces fought for the top prize in three events -- the Lunar Lander Challenge, the Vertical Rocket Challenge, and the Space Elevator Games.

In addition to the featured competitions, the Wirefly X PRIZE Cup included a series of rocketry exhibitions and educational presentations. "Rocketman"Dan Schlund demonstrated his "Rocketbelt," a device which allows him to soar above the earth with a rocket strapped to his back. The Rocket Racing League debuted the Mark-1 X-Racer, a preview of next-generation motor sports. Other attractions included high-powered rocket launches, a student competition, a symposium on personal spaceflight, and an assortment of ground displays and simulators.

A video presentation focusing on the 2006 Wirefly X PRIZE Cup is available on YouTube.

A Video of Rocketman during one of his three flights

Lunar Lander Challenge

The Lunar Lander Challenge (LLC), presented by NASA, is intended to accelerate the commercial development of a vehicle capable of ferrying cargo or humans back and forth between the surface of the Moon and low moon orbit (approximately 50 meters).

Such a vehicle would have direct application to NASA's space exploration goals as well as the personal spaceflight industry. Additionally, the prize will help industry build new vehicles and develop the operational capacity to operate quick turnaround vertical take-off, vertical landing vehicles, which will be of significant use to many facets of the commercial launch procurement market.

To win this challenge, a rocket-propelled vehicle with an assigned payload must take-off vertically, climb to at least 50 meters altitude above the pad, fly for a pre-determined minimum amount of time and land vertically on a target that is approximately 100 meters from the takeoff point.

The vehicle can then be refuelled.

The vehicle must then fly back to the original pad under the same guidelines and land on the original launch pad.

There are two levels to the competition; Level 1 and Level 2.

In Level 1 the vehicle must be in the air on each leg for 90 seconds. The prize purse is $350,000 for the first vehicle to achieve that, and $150,000 for the second.

In Level 2 the vehicle must be in the air on each leg for 180 seconds. The prize purse is $1 million.

Space Elevator Games

A Space Elevator is a system using a super-strong ribbon going from the surface of the Earth to a point beyond geosynchronous orbit. The ribbon is held in place by a counterweight in orbit. As the Earth rotates, the ribbon is held taut. Vehicles would climb the ribbon powered by a beam of energy projected from the surface of the Earth.

The challenge is divided into two categories: the Power Beam Challenge and the Tether Challenge.

In the Power Beam Challenge, each team designs and builds a climber (a machine capable of traveling up and down a tether ribbon). The climber must carry a payload. Power will be beamed from a transmitter to a receiver on the climber. Each climber must travel to a height of 50 meters traveling a minimum speed of 1 meter per second. The Tether Challenge is to help develop very strong tether material for use in various structural applications.

Original X Prize

This section on the original X Prize needs to be substantially reduced. A good three or four-paragraph summary with a pointer to the main Ansari X PRIZE article has been suggested.

Original X Prize Rules

The original contest winner was to be the first team to launch a piloted spacecraft, carrying at least three crewmembers (or one human pilot and payload equivalent to two more), to an altitude of at least 100 kilometers (328,100 ft or 62.14 mi), and then repeat the feat using the same spacecraft within two weeks. Reaching orbit was not a goal, and so all the competitors aimed to make suborbital flights only. The spacecraft were permitted to land at the same site that they launched from. The 100 km target is the boundary of space as defined by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.

The two competitive flights were required to be made by the same vehicle. With the exception of propellant, no more than 10% of the vehicle could be replaced between flights; the rest of the vehicle must be reused. Even NASA's Space Shuttle falls short of this performance requirement, since it takes much more than two weeks to ready a given shuttle between flights. However, the space shuttle is an orbital, rather than sub-orbital spacecraft. The vehicle must be intact and theoretically reusable after the second flight, and the crew must return unharmed.

Altitudes achieved were measured by three separate systems. There was a flight recorder, referred to as the "gold box", carried on each competitive flight, and two separate radar systems were used. Official altitudes were determined by a compromise between the three systems.

Teams were forbidden to accept government funding for their efforts. Private sponsors were acceptable, however.

Representatives of the X PRIZE Foundation symbolically presented the ten million dollar prize to Burt Rutan and Paul Allen of Mojave Aerospace Ventures on November 6, 2004. The Ansari X PRIZE trophy is on the left.

The Tier One project made two successful competitive flights, X1 on September 29 2004 and X2 on October 4 2004. They thus won the prize, which was awarded on November 6 2004. (Note: the winning team is referred to by several names at various times: Tier One, Scaled Composites, and Mojave Aerospace Ventures.)

The trophy is currently on display in the lobby of the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle, Washington.

Organization

Created in May 1996 and initially called just "X Prize", the event was rechristened as the "Ansari X PRIZE" on May 6, 2004 following a multimillion dollar donation from Iranian-born entrepreneurs Anousheh Ansari and Amir Ansari. After the initial prize was awarded in 2004, but in advance of the 2006 "X PRIZE Cup", the X PRIZE Foundation entered into a two-year sponsorship deal with Wirefly, a leader in online cell phone sales and activation.

The X PRIZE Foundation, (based at the St. Louis Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri), maintains a list of organizations registered to compete for the prize. Some companies developed their craft in secret, not publicly announcing their plans until they were ready to request air/space permission from their local government. Such was the case with the winning team Scaled Composites, whose founder Burt Rutan announced in 1996 that the company would compete for the X PRIZE but worked entirely in secret for seven years, finally revealing the completed vehicle in April 2003.

Spinoffs

The success of the X PRIZE competition has spurred spinoffs that are set up in the same way. There have been two major spinoffs at this point, the first of which is the M Prize (short for Methuselah Mouse Prize), which is a prize set up by University of Cambridge biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey which will go to the scientific team that successfully extends the life or reverses the aging of mice, which would then conceivably be extended to humans. The second are the NASA Centennial Challenges, which consist of (among others) the Tether Challenge in which teams compete to develop superstrong tethers as a component to space elevators, and the Beam Power Challenge which encourages ideas for transmitting power wirelessly. The X PRIZE foundation itself is developing additional prizes, including one around genomics, and another around energy -- the Automotive X PRIZE. There is also a possible "H-Prize", focused on hydrogen vehicle research, although this goal has already been addressed by H.R. 5143, an X-Prize-inspired bill passed by the House of Representatives.

See also

Related technical topics:

Further reading

  1. "The X Prize", an article by Ian Parker on pages 52 – 63 of the 4 October 2004 issue of The New Yorker
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